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You don’t think of Trout and Thome being similar players, and they’re not, but maybe they are similar hitters. During his peak 1995-2004 peak, Thome averaged 39 home runs and 112 walks, however, so if Trout is going to sacrifice batting average, it needs to come with a few more home runs and a few more walks to match Thome.

1. Trout does not need to match Thome's offensive production to be as good or better as a player overall, for obvious reasons.
2. Trout does not need to match Thome's raw numbers to match his value on offense, because 2014 is very different from 2000.

OK, kids, time for me to drag out the stinking corpse of America's least favourite baseball statistic: Contact Hitter's Batting Average (CHBA)!

I devised it 30 years ago after hearing someone say, "If such-and-such didn't strike out so much, he'd be a .300 hitter!" So, using VisiCalc on my Atari 800 computer (dear God, I'm old) I devised a just-for-fun series of formulas:

"Extra Strikeouts (XK)": K above league average. In the 1980s, it was around 1 K per 6 AB, now it's nearly 1 in 4 (.229).
"Extra Hits (XH)": XK * BA when not striking out. These are the "extra" hits the batter would (presumably) get if they weren't striking out so much. Plug the extra hits into BA, and presto!

OK, let's use Trout as an example. He's 40/147 (.272) with 47 K. That's 13.3 K above league average, 10th-worst in baseball (Justin Upton is worst, with 18.5.) Trout is hitting an even .400 when he's not striking out, giving him 5 (rounded off) "extra" hits. Plug it in: (40+5)/147, and that's a CHBA of .306. (Hey, it works!)

When you look at all 193 players with at least 100 AB, they're actually (as a group) striking out less than average: 432 less K than league, or about -2 each. (This makes sense; you're more likely to stay in the lineup if you're making contact, yes?) Jose Altuve has just 13 K in 161 AB, almost 24 fewer than average. Detroit teammates Ian Kinsler and Victor Martinez are both around -22.

When you look at all 193 players with at least 100 AB, they're actually (as a group) striking out less than average: 432 less K than league, or about -2 each. (This makes sense; you're more likely to stay in the lineup if you're making contact, yes?)

Wow this Trout strikeout thing is of national concern now, I thought I was having deja vu until I realised this was another issue raising this "concern". So if Mike Trout never strikes out he hits .400? Bah!

Trout is an amazing player, 200Ks a year or not. Personally I reckon he's playing around a bit with things. As noted, he's a little less patient on strike 1, he appears to be swinging harder. Maybe he wants a 50 homer season? Don't know, but I reckon he'll settle into a lifetime of 310/400/530 20SB 150K and usual awesome glove and base running 8WAR player that he is. Because, well he's Mike Trout and that's what he does.

Juan Francisco just struck out in something like 9 straight plate appearances this week. But he's hitting .278/.369/.542, not including another double and home run tonight, and cost the Jays nothing, so he's another guy I'm happy to watch play for my team despite the strikeouts.

Apologies for re-posting this here, but it was the 99th post on the previous Trout-strikeout thread, which was already nearly dead when I posted it, so it didn't get much of a response. But I am still curious about it:

Something strange seems to be going on in Anaheim this year. We're so used to seeing Trout at the top of the WAR leaderboard (at the moment he's second in the AL to Donaldson on BB-Ref; 2.3 to 2.5) that maybe we don't question it, but I feel like something's awry.

Despite the Ks, Trout is having a very good year offensively, but it's nothing THAT special. He's 6th in the AL in OPS, 6th in SLG, 6th in R, 8th in HR, 12th in RBI, 13th in BB, only 28th in OBP, 36th in AVG. He's only stolen 4 bases. A few hitters, like Jose Bautista and Victor Martinez, probably Jose Abreu, have been clearly better than him. Of course, Trout does play center field and apparently plays it pretty well. His dWAR is 0.8 already. But last year his dWAR was negative, and I remember in a Tigers-Angels series earlier this year, the Tigers were running on him every chance they got. So I'm a bit skeptical that he's truly an elite defensive center fielder.

But what really seems strange is that if you look at the WAR leaders, you also see Howie Kendrick at #4, Colin Cowgill at #10, and Erick Aybar at #12. Kendrick's having a pretty good year, but Cowgill only has 83 plate appearances (Trout, for comparison, has 165) and Aybar has a .713 OPS, which somehow equates to a 103 OPS+. J.B. Shuck has 0.7 dWAR in just 19 games.

So what's going on here? It seems like WAR is treating Angel Stadium like it's Dodger Stadium in 1968, even though it has played as a hitter's park this year. It also seems that Angel players, especially outfielders, are getting a huge boost in defensive value (possibly relating to park factor?). Back to Trout, he is indeed "on pace" for 10+ WAR, which would be a better season than last year (9.2 WAR), when he hit .323/.432/.557 with 33 SB. That doesn't seem right.

Is this just a small-sample-size problem that will go away by the end of the year? Or is WAR broken in Anaheim?

as someone who watched juan up close i will share that the american league suits him well as he can dh.

folks claim he can play third or first base but as the saying goes, if putting someone in a spacesuit and having them ride along in the shuttle makes someone an astronaut then wearing a glove and standing in the vicinity of third base makes francisco a third baseman.

he is also a feast/famine hitter (common to power hitters). so the 1-27 stretch with 16 strikeouts is coming. hopefully management will be patient.

i agree that francisco can help a team. but in a very defined way. asking him to 'get out of his swim lane' is a bad idea

#13 WAR uses 3 year average. So a PF of 96 right now. Something of a compromise that most people go with after Harold Brooks demonstrated that most of the year to year variation in park factors was just noise. Pete Palmer's compromise was to use 3 year park factors unless there was a substantial change in the park and that seems better than a decision to blithely use 3 year factors (for example, I have little doubt it's wrong to use 3 year park factors for much of Hank Greenberg's career. The Tigers made several major changes to the configuration in that time frame)

Early season single season park factors are so noisy as to be useless. In particular the mix of road parks doesn't give you anything close to a random mix. And mix of opposition starters carries too much weight. You can attempt to adjust for all of this, but it's a lot of work to apply to something that's already pretty noisy. IOW 3 year park effects are "good enough" for this time of year given the size of the standard error in something like WAR.

#16 At this time of year, factors like seeing the Padres at home and not on the road can move the dial a fair amount.

Last time I checked, Sean excluded inter-league games in figuring park factors (to avoid the who DH influence on scoring issue) and if this is still the case, what you've got is 3 games vs the Braves, 4 vs the Pirates, 3 vs the Cardinals, 3 vs the Cubs and 3 vs the Dbacks at home and 3 at the Phillies, 4 at the Pirates, 3 at the Cardinals and 4 at the Reds. Easy to see how the mix of parks and opponents (and pitchers) could move the dial a great deal. I mean cancel the Cardinals and Pirates and you've got games at home versus the Padres, Dbacks and Cubs balanced against road games in Cincy and Philly. I'd expect there to be a fair amount more runs scored in the road games.